This is one of those times where I am a manga reader first and an anime-watcher second. Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta (The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses) is one of the cutest manga I have read this year so far. It’s a really sweet tale that I am enjoying but an anime adaptation can sometimes alter your feelings. Still, because I liked the manga, I wanted to see the anime so I could relive that sweetness all over again. Did the anime do the manga justice?
Let’s go!
First Episode Synopsis
Komura has a crush on a girl named Mie. Of course, Komura sits in the typical protagonist’s seat at school and his love interest is right next to him. He can’t take his eyes off of her and often thinks about how she looks, how cute her movements art, you know… all the dumb things your brain does whenever you’re in love with someone.
There’s just one little problem… Mie forgot her glasses and can’t see anything without them! When they have to share a textbook, it makes Komura really nervous! When she accidentally wears his shoes after class because she opened the wrong locker, it was cute! Heck, her actual shoes had a frog on them and they even hired a voice actor to play the frog, and that, too was super cute. This whole premise is really, really cute!
Before I continue gushing, the next day, Mie “forgot” her glasses again… or more like… she stepped on them and broke them by accident. Then, she’s tired and falls asleep in class. When she wakes up, she mistakes Komura for her father because she’s still half asleep… and then falls back to sleep by slumping over onto him which drives him over the edge. Again, more cuteness!
The episode ends with her coming to school for the third day in a row without her glasses. She gets super close while squinting and is like “That’s what you look like.” She reveals she’s wearing contacts and can see just fine! Another super cute moment!
This whole story is just cuteness personified!!!
Worth Watching?
NO!! – Wait. Did you just say “NO” with not one but TWO exclamation marks? Josh… you just spent the above four paragraphs gushing over how cute this show is! What gives? Are you playing a joke on us?
No.
I’m not playing a joke.
I seriously can not recommend this show to you.
I’ve been with The Outerhaven for 9 years now. In those 9 years, this is my 136th First Reaction. This is the first time in my long history that I am giving a show the NO answer not because of the quality of the story… but because of the studio that produced it.
This show is being produced by GoHands. The first four minutes of the show are an absolutely over-produced hot mess. Out-of-place CG, bright vibrantly-colored overlays, and weird camera angles and pans that some people complained gave them motion sickness. Then, if you survive the CG daggers to the eyes, the show settles into a mix of traditional animation and CG.
Sometimes a CG is traditional and then the very next scene is CG… sometimes they merge the two together. Flipping between one style to the next or simply combining them is overly jarring to the viewer. On top of that, the hair animation… is SO UNNECESSARY! Like… every single strand of Mie’s hair was animated in almost every scene.
In short, the art style, bag CG, and animation serve as a major distraction from the story. I stuck with the episode to the end because I had to know if they were going to be faithful to the manga and, to their credit, so far, they have been. If you want to brave the terrible job GoHands did with this show and suffer through it just for the story, then go for it because as a fan of romance, the story is excellent and I’m sure you will love it.
But, if you would rather just dive into the story and skip the actual headache you might get from watching this show…just read the manga. You’ll be better off.
Trust me.
